Armchair BEA Day 3: Novellas/Short Stories

Armchair BEA Day 3 Question: “Now it is time to give a little love to those little stories in your life. Share your love for your favorite shorts of any form. What is a short story or novella that doesn’t get the attention that it deserves? Recommend to readers what shorts you would recommend they start with. How about listing some short story anthologies based upon genres or authors? “

Short Stories

Roald Dahl is best known for his children’s books. However, before he became a children’s author, he wrote adult short stories for such journals as Playboy and the Saturday Evening Post. After serving as a fighter pilot in the Royal Air Force during World War II, Roald Dahl worked in the British embassy in the United States where he published his first short story called A Piece of Cake. While in the Mediterranean, he had been shot down by a German plane; a journalist at the embassy asked Dahl to send him a detailed account of the event. Surprisingly, the first draft of the story was accepted and published in the Saturday Evening Post without any revisions.

Roald Dahl is a master of dark humor. Nowhere is this more evident than in his short stories. My 4 favorite stories are listed below.

Lamb to the Slaughter – Arguably the greatest short story Dahl ever wrote. It was adapted for television by Alfred Hitchcock.

Man from the South

Parson’s Pleasure

And for anyone who is fearful for the future of publishing, The Great Automatic Grammatizator is a must-read.

Anthologies

As for anthologies, I recommend getting The Umbrella Man and Other Stories (1996) and Skin and Other Stories (2000).

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Published by Fariba

I am a PhD student in French with a particular interest in late medieval and early modern religious rhetoric and performance. I love browsing research libraries and shopping at used bookstores for obscure/lesser known books.
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